HDFC Affordable Apartments for Working Folk: No Longer Affordable?

July 2, 2014 — Thinking of buying a Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) co-op? Thinking of selling one? You might want to think again. Designed as affordable housing for working people of limited income — teachers, social workers, actors, bakers, police officers and others — they're in buildings that in the past would have been bulldozed for "urban renewal" but instead were rehabbed by homesteaders, each of whom paid New York City $250 to $2,500 to take title. And now those low-income people who got a much-needed break aren't inclined to pay it forward. Instead, they just want to get paid — as in, say, $875,000 for an Upper West Side four-bedroom. But the Catch-22, as Michelle Higgins writes in The New York Times, is that prospective buyers can't earn more than $67,000 a year, and banks aren't inclined to lend to people of such middling means. Or at least not unless such working folk have somehow managed to save for a huge, huge down payment. Affordable housing? Heck with that, dude ... I got mine. See also  "Profiteering by HDFC Apartment Owners Threatens Program's Affordability."